


Journalistic Integrity

by Chillinmetaphorically



Category: Tanis (Podcast), The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Behind the Scenes, Everyone is mean to Nic, Multi, Nic & Alex secretly love fifty shades of grey, PNWS, and Alex keeps up with the kardashians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 13:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16788052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chillinmetaphorically/pseuds/Chillinmetaphorically
Summary: Nic is having trouble casting his new show, Alex uses her favorite romance novel to con her way into her subject’s heart and get the perfect story, and Strand feels like a Real Housewife of the Pacific Northwest





	Journalistic Integrity

Alex laughed nervously-- a bad sign-- and swiveled around in the pleather upholstered foam computer chair to turn towards Nic, who had been pretending to fiddle with his phone for the past 30 minutes but had actually been intently watching the back of Alex’s head for any sign of emotion.  
  
“Well?” he asked. The editing suite was unusually hot this afternoon.  
  
“It’s… I think it could be interesting?” she offered, shrugging.  
  
“It could be interesting?”

“I mean, it’s only a first cut, so there’s obviously going to be a lot you change--”

“Alex! I have to give Terry and Paul something tomorrow morning!”

“It’s... you could… I mean…” Alex tried to say something reassuring, but there was nothing reassuring to say. Tanis was a mess. There was no way in hell anyone would want to listen to thirty minutes of rambling about the nature of mystery with a couple of “the myth of Tanis… is a mystery” lines thrown in, interspersed with an interview with some guy who similarly didn’t know how to explain what the fuck he was talking about, to the extent that PNWS threw out his interview the first time.

“I mean,” she cleared her throat, “what IS Tanis? And why do we care? Why do listeners want to know about Tanis?”

“Because it’s a mystery!” Nic explained, and she cringed.

“You can’t just pull a name out of thin air and declare it mysterious because you can’t find records of it on the internet.”

“It’s a real thing, though!” Nic leaned over her and saved the audio file again-- a compulsive habit-- and exed out of ProTools, making a show of properly ejecting the hard drive before disconnecting it, all the while not looking at her at all.

“Where are you going?”

“I have a meeting.” Alex followed him out the door.

“It’s just… you’re doing a lot of telling and not showing.”

“It’s a podcast, Alex.”

“What I mean is, you can’t just tell the audience that Tanis is a mysterious myth. You have to tell the story and then make THEM think to themselves that Tanis is mysterious. And you keep bringing up the word Tanis with practically zero context. And it’s ALL monologue. If i wanted to listen to a person reading me a story, I’d actually use my Audible subscription.”

Nic flung open the door to his office, stepping around the open boxes all over the floor to place his things down on his desk. Alex pushed a couple of boxes aside with her foot to clear a path to sit by him.

“Listen. Your premise is great. And from everything you’ve told me about Tanis it sounds really cool. And Terry and Paul are behind it one hundred percent. But you can’t just talk about Alan Parsons and read a bunch of stories. You have a great radio voice but nobody wants to listen to one person read a bunch of shit for thirty minutes.”

“Can you read one of the stories? People know you from Pacific Northwest Stories. Maybe it’ll make them happy to hear you?”

“Sure, okay, that’s a start. But you need other characters.”

“Other characters? What, like hire someone to pretend to also be looking for Tanis?”

“That’s an option. Not a good one, but an option. You could also try to find other people looking for it. In real life.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Oh! You actually have a meeting.”

“I told you I had a meeting. I’m trying to get sponsors for Tanis.”

“I thought you were just trying to get rid of me.”

“Well now I am. Can you get the door?” Alex weaved her way through the maze of boxes-- why the hell did Nick have so much stuff in his office? -- and opened the door. A woman stood in the doorway, arms crossed, in slacks and a blazer. She looked very no-nonsense with her dark red lipstick, an expensive-looking bag dangling from the crook of her elbow, and her blonde hair pulled back in a low bun. The woman raised an eyebrow at the state of the room.

“Aw man,” she said, flatly, “a plant in a cardboard box. Did you get fired?”

“Actually,” Nic laughed nervously, “I got a promotion!”

The blonde smirked. “Yeah. I know. You told me in the email. Aaaaand over the phone.”

Alex snorted. “I’m gonna go. You’re still in for Chicago, right? Cause I’m gonna go book the tickets.”

“Don’t book them! I’ll do it.”

“Nic!” She leaned on the doorjamb as if swooning with exasperation, “You always book the tickets and then you always get the miles!”

“I travel more than you. I need those miles.”

“You travel more than me because you have more miles.”

“And I always will.” He turned his attention towards the Squarespace CEO, “Why don’t you have a seat, Mary Kate?” She did, and Alex sighed before exiting.

There was silence, for a moment, before Mary Kate blurted: “I listened to your, uh, demo.”

“And what did you think?”

“The way we do things, we pay you per listener. The more listeners you have, the more money you get.”

“I… I am aware.”

“This is because the more listeners you get, the more people hear about Squarespace.”

“I am familiar with how radio advertisements work.”

“Your show is dull and nobody is going to listen to it.”

“Oh.”

“But I think it has potential.”

“Oh!”

“I started looking into the Tanis myth myself and I actually found a couple of things.”

“You did?”

“You’re probably already talking about it on the show. I mean, I assume you have a rolling cache system for tracking internet history and have Tanis-related terms keyed in to--”

“A rolling what?”

“Didn’t you say you were a hacker?”

“I said I was an amateur hacker.” She raised an eyebrow at this response. “A very amateur hacker?”

“Listen. I’ve always wanted to be an actress, but like you, I have a face for radio.”

“I think you’re actually… wait, what?”

“Your show needs more drama. It needs a character people can actually root for. Someone likeable. I think I’m that person. We can pretend I’m this super secret hacker spy you hired, you know? Like the girl with the dragon tattoo!”

“This is a nonfiction show. There are no actors.”

“Squarespace will give you fifty dollars per thousand listeners.”

“Sold.”

* * *

Alex Reagan knew the SJP code of ethics-- all Pacific Northwest Stories staff were supposed to abide by them. And although it never outright says “do not sleep with a subject”, it does say to “avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information unless traditional, open methods will not yield information vital to the public.”

The unless circumstance didn’t apply here-- the records of a paranormal investigator are by no means vital to the public, and sleeping with a subject definitely fell under the umbrella of “surreptitious”. However, if somehow Terry and Paul found out and called a meeting about it, she could argue that technically it wasn’t a method of gathering information. There was no presumption that in exchange for her services he’d give her the information she wanted. She had just done what she felt was natural in the moment. She’d felt a connection. And it wasn’t her fault that men tended to get loose-lipped. She didn’t know what kind of man he was. He could have easily sent her on her way. But instead he showed her the tapes.

It all started with the crackpot Emily Dumont. Alex had been in the editing suite for about five hours. The woman’s voice, which had once sounded dark and sexy, was starting to get on her nerves after listening and re-listening and re-re-listening to hours and hours of interview.

She wished she had more of Strand’s interview to edit-- even after countless hours of listening to his segment, his voice’s sexiness never wavered in her mind-- but his segment, at the moment, was short and sweet. And finished.

She’d started to doze off in her chair when something Dumont said gave her an idea.

“My fiction is more personal. More Fifty Shades of Grey. But darker, and far more literary.”

Fifty Shades. Although she would never have hailed the series as any kind of literary achievement, she had devoured each (in secret) as soon as they came out. She’d gotten e-book versions of them, fearful that any evidence would tip someone off about her awful taste in reading.

Only Nic knew. He liked them too.

“Obviously you don’t like them that much,” quipped Nic, spearing a sugar snap pea with his fork, “or you’d know it was Katherine who hounded him for the interview. You’re nothing like Ana.” He leaned back in his chair smugly, as if he’d just delivered some sort of sick burn and it was she who should have been embarrassed for not knowing that. Nic at his new desk in his new office. He’d been promoted three weeks ago (by Paul-- it would have looked like nepotism had Terry done it) and the first thing he did was pull Alex aside and tell her he was giving her her own show. And Alex regretted every moment of it.

“Listen Alex,” he had led her into one of the shittier recording studios, and pleaded with her, “Tanis isn’t close to being anything yet. I have hours and hours of sound and no story. It’s a disaster. I just…” he’d just fallen prey to his own fragile ego and started an incredibly self-indulgent project, and such is the way with self-indulgent projects. Once you take a step back and look at them, they fucking suck. He’d recently hired a hacker far more charming than himself. Charming may not have been the right word-- Alex had spoken to her on Skype during the hiring process-- but she was definitely dynamic, whereas Nic tended to have this Charlie Brown wishy-washiness. Meerkatnip-- that was the girl’s nom de plume-- made a rude comment about Nic not knowing what the hell he was even researching (“What the fuck even is Tanis? He hears a name in an old magazine and declares it a mystery? If whatever he’s looking into is a real thing, he’s doing a shitty job explaining it for a fucking journalist.”) which is what sealed the deal for Alex. She loved Nic-- she truly did-- but sometimes you need to hire someone to be mean to them for their own good (and so she wouldn’t have to be the one).

One time, when she and Nic had been especially drunk, Nic had admitted to her that when the pair had gotten their junior year summer internships at PNWS, that he’d probably only gotten it because of Terry.

“You’re a better journalist,” he said, slurring his words, “because you don’t care about rules. You’re pushy. You make people wanna tell you stuff. Me? Nobody wants to tell me stuff. I want to tell THEM stuff!” and then he went on and on about pirate radio for a half hour before she called her then-boyfriend to pick the both of them up from the bar so that she didn’t have to listen to him drone on about wanting to be a goddamn disk jockey.

“Of course, Nic.” She’d slung his arm over her shoulder and they’d stumbled out of the bar together, “You’re a regular Howard Stern.”

That boyfriend had ended up dumping her a couple of weeks later because she was “too close” with Nic. How she ended up with so many insecure men in her life, she did not know. Maybe that was what had made Strand so alluring-- he had a very forceful, confident presence that she’d picked up on right away. Meanwhile, she had just finished recording a very scripted conversation about how, no, MK was wrong about the reddit thing, and even though she’s a good hacker, this show is all you, Nic. She didn’t get why he didn’t just not include the reddit comment and then not have to record her countering it, but whatever. Anything for her friend and producing partner.

He may have gotten himself sucked into a boring show going nowhere, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let that happen to her.

It only hit her later that night, when she was washing her dishes-- how could Nic have seen a comment about himself and Meerkatnip on Reddit when his show hadn’t even come out yet? Did he make up a comment to make himself look bad but simultaneously make it seem like his show had an active audience? Maybe he was trying to sell Meerkatnip as a character. She was awfully mysterious, and sometimes Alex wondered if she was a real hacker at all, or just an actress channeling Carly from PRA whom they’d only met because she had gotten Alex as a secret Santa at their very first PNWS/PRA Holiday party (she’d given her a Japanese-style teapot from HomeGoods, price tag still on, $16.99), and who Nic had slept with, become obsessed with, and was rapidly dumped by in quick succession. Which, honestly, was far more unprofessional than sleeping with a subject.

“All I’m saying” Alex sighed, still discussing the elegant and complicated minutiae of moving parts in Fifty Shades, “is that Ana got Christian Grey to meet with her a second time under the guise of a photoshoot. It was your idea to ‘enrich the podcast experience’ by having a notes page on the Squarespace! We need pictures to fill it with.”

“It’s a website, Alex, you can just call it a website. It’s not a different thing. And besides, the photoshoot wasn’t a set-up. Katherine was supposed to do that part too.” Katherine, Ana’s journalist friend. If she were Ana, Nic would have to be Katherine.

“Right. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t use it as an excuse.” Strand didn’t seem the type to stalk her and show up at her place of work, although to be fair, it’s a lot easier to walk into a hardware store like Ana’s than a radio studio. Either way, as a follow-up to her interview, Ana had requested a picture of Christian Grey for her publication.

“It was part of it. She HAD to do that for the article. It wasn’t an excuse to see him.”

“I don’t think you’re understanding what I’m saying, Nic. I’m not trying to compare my life to Fifty Shades of fucking Grey. I’m using something I read in a book to come up with an idea about how to get something in my own life.”

“Oh?” asked Nic; his classic non-response.

“Um, yes, Nic.”

“I see.”

“You see what?”

“Nothing, nothing.”

“I care about the quality of the show, and I think we need to hear a little more from him. I want to see what’s in those black tapes. Because if we don’t, it seems silly to even mention them at all and it’s the most interesting part of the interview.”

Alex had been up his ass all week about her new podcast. She’d originally pitched it as a show about questionable careers. It was going to be called “Misunderstood”, and on it she would interview professionals in fields that people were likely to judge. She’d listed possibilities to him-- a mortician, the leader of a messianic synagogue (would that be a priest or a rabbi?), a prison guard, etc. etc. But everything was going to shit because she couldn’t find any of the careers on her list except for ‘paranormal researcher’. Of those she found plenty. Terry and Paul urged her to make her podcast about interesting careers instead-- Paul knew someone involved in geocaching, and someone from Terry’s old college band was an airline pilot now. She’d already recorded the Geocaching episode, but she had decided she wanted to make the Paranormal Researchers episode the pilot because the people she’d interviewed so far-- Dirk Abruzzi, star of Demon Hunters, and Raymond Sivorski-- were far more interesting than Paul’s geocaching friend.

“Sure. Send him an email, I guess. But, you know, we can just use the standard publicity picture. You don’t think he’ll bring that up?”

“He did promise me a follow-up call. I’ll ask him a couple of questions, butter him up, you know, and then ask.”

“You’re going to have to cut someone if you’re going to devote more time to Strand.”

“Raymond. I’m cutting Raymond. Fucking dick. Did I tell you what he did with his salad?”

“Sivorski?”

“Yeah. The whole Ouija board parlor party history was interesting, but unnecessary. And the whole thing with the instruments and cameras would probably work better in a different format, to be honest. It’s too much narration and too little action.”

Nic crossed his arms at that-- that was exactly what Alex had said about the second version of the Tanis pilot he’d finished and excitedly emailed her over a month ago. He had some new MK material he was going to splice in now-- maybe that would help?

“And,” she continued, “to have him eventually listen to this and hear how little air time he got? That would be priceless! I hope he sends an angry letter.”

“That’s fine but PLEASE leave in the ‘doctorate in being a fucking asshole’ line”

“That was Dirk, not Raymond. And I wouldn’t DREAM of cutting that. It’s the best line in the episode.”

“If anything, you would probably be the dom in this situation.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The fifty shades thing. You’re nothing like Ana Steele. You’d be the tyer. Not the tye-ee.”

“Either way he has that mysterious CEO thing going for him.”

“I wouldn’t expect an Audi-- he’s an academic. Can you pass the soy sauce?”

“Imagine Ana was a better journalist. That could have been some profile she did.”

“She wasn’t a journalist at all, Alex, she was an english major.”

“You’re pedantic and it shows in your work.” she picked up her box of takeout lo mein and strode out of the room.

So she did what any good journalist in her situation would do and gave her tight-lipped subject a blow job under his desk. And like magic, the tapes were hers.

* * *

"Okay- so Alex is gonna bring up the tape, Strand is gonna come up with an excuse--"

"There really isn't any connection between--" Strand began to interject.

"We know." said Alex

"Save it for the show." Nic looked back down at the outline. "Alex is gonna tell Strand that all these cases are connected, give examples, et cetera, Strand is gonna deny it all."

"You know?" asked Strand, incredulously.

"Well at the time, we didn't know. When I went to the cave."

"Last month?"

"We weren't going to use the cave thing because it's obviously unrelated but then the totems outside were vandalized..."

"Fell. They fell, Alex, we're not saying vandalized. Also, you don't know this yet, because it's three weeks ago."

"So," Started Strand, "we're all pretending it's three weeks ago and they haven't found Sebastian Torres yet?"

"You got it, Doctor. You're a real pro.” Nic checked his Zoom recorder again, “Alex, can you talk a little more? I need to fix your levels."

"Did the interns give you their script for the reenactment of the cave witch video?" She asked.

"It's buried in my email somewhere."

"It's really cute. I think we should have them do it."

"They're not actors."

"But they're free."

"Wait, are some people getting paid for this?" asked Strand

"Richard, this is my full-time career."

"Okay, you're both good. Ready to record?" Strand had started to feel like a character on one of Charlie’s Real Housewife shows. When he and Alex had gone on the Torres case it had felt like documentary journalism. Then she’d called him into the studio, transcripts in hand, and made him re-record most of their conversations with her little edits in the margins (“say this more forcefully”, “emphasize the word ‘that’ here”, “say something about apophenia here”) and he started wondering what kind of agenda she was pushing. They couldn’t possibly call it a documentary if it was fake, right?

“It’s called a docu-drama.” Alex had told him after the fifth or sixth time he’d brought it up to her, “have you ever seen, well, anything on Bravo? Or a documentary with re-enactments?”

“Those are two very different things.”

“It’s kind of like that. I mean, these cases are real, correct?”

“Yes, but the way we’re connecting them to one another and making it seem like they’re happening in a different order-- is that… honest?”

“Think about it like this: Kourtney Kardashian and Scott Disick keep breaking up and getting back together, right? This is a real thing that’s happening. Kourtney has real feelings about this thing happening in her life. So does her family. But the cameras aren’t there all the time, and there are certain things that are a little too private to put on the show, so when it’s time to film, they sit around a table eating their salads and they talk about it. And they have a list of topics to talk about cause they don’t want to forget anything.”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. And you had me pretend to get invited onto a Chopped podcast. I looked it up and there’s no such thing.”

“Yeah, that was a really funny bit! It’s adorable when you don’t know pop culture stuff. I think our audience is really going to like that.”

“And another thing! You continue to act like we already have an audience and that they’re calling us! You keep asking people to mention that they’ve listened to the podcast when they haven’t.”

“It makes it seem more real. Like it’s all happening in real time.”

“But it actually makes it faker to pretend it is when it isn’t. You had interns recording voicemails about how much they love the show! And me!”

“The interns DO love the show! AND you!”

“These levels are perfect!” Nic exclaimed, off to the side.

“We’re in the green?”

“We’re in the green.” Alex immediately changed her demeanor.

“I have to ask-- your black tapes…” she paused, dramatically, “they're not just a random collection of unsolvable videos, are they?”


End file.
